Just a short one today to share some news. I have just been offered, and accepted, the role of MD for Rainbow Voices, to start in September 2024. Rainbow Voices are an SATB choir for LGBT+ people and their friends, based in South Birmingham but with a catchment area across the West Midlands. Their MD of the last five years, Rosie Howarth, has had to move on, and I am enjoying a smooth and well-organised handover, finding the choir in good shape both vocally and in spirits. (Interesting how often the two go together isn’t it?)

I’ve had a number of conversations recently with people about different approaches to learning music. You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s a question that has multiple right answers, though the different approaches confer different advantages and so may prove more or less useful in different circumstances, and I’ve been finding it useful to reflect on these differences, both for my own benefit, and for the various other musicians I find myself supporting.

Start at the beginning

This is a classic approach for a reason. Learning the music in the same order that an audience will listen to it has an intuitive logic because your learning experience follows the same narrative journey that you will eventually be sharing with others. It is easier to make sense of the music when you encounter each musical event in its proper temporal sequence, and it is easier to internalise (and memorise if that’s your genre expectation) if you have this sequential structure in place from the get-go.

This is one of those ‘writing it out to see if I can work out what I think’ posts. I have been thinking recently a lot about the dynamic in which a choral director finds themselves being bullied by a member of their choir. Chris Rowbury wrote an insightful post on the kind of dynamic of which this is a particular type some time back, which prompted some painful and heartfelt conversations within various communities of choral directors in which I’m involved.

There’s stuff going on behind the scenes to develop training and support for choir leaders – both musical and administrative – with the aim of both helping reduce its incidence and help people cope with and resolve difficult situations whilst keeping relationships and emotional health intact. It may be appropriate to blog about some of that in due course, though it’s currently at too early a stage to go into any detail.

I spent a happy day on Saturday with Celtic Chords chorus down in Truro, with the remit to help them develop performing confidence. We approached this from a variety of angles; indeed it turns out that all kinds of development activities that you might think of in terms of vocal or musical skills can helpfully be addressed through the lens of how they contribute to performing confidence. And front and centre through all of them was the principle of why we perform: to share the delight that is music, to put joy into the hearts of others.

We started the day with a focus on vocal skills, since security in your technique facilitates security in performance. The essence of technique is being able to do something at will; having that sense of control over yourself means that you feel much less at the mercy of the vagaries of fate. And addressing this first meant that we continued to get the benefit of enhanced continuity of sound throughout the rest of the day.

My title today comes from one of the more surprising bits of feedback I have had after a coaching session. To be fair, it wasn’t actually me that was described as ‘sensible’ (I was as daft as ever), it was the ideas we had worked on. The point was that the singer didn’t feel she had a long shopping list of things to remember, because the ideas fitted in with her existing musical concept of the songs, but her use of the word ‘sensible’ to articulate this point still made me laugh out loud (well, squawk).

My day with Silver Lining chorus had the brief to help them discover more musical opportunities with the package they will be taking to LABBS Convention in the autumn, with its first complete outing at a local festival this month. They already had a clear concept of what they wanted to do with the two songs, so it was a matter of finding ways to help them realise that vision more vividly.

When I last reflected on the category of ‘old barbershop’ eight years ago, I finished up by wondering what sounded normal then that would sound dated 20 years on. Well, it’s only eight years on, and I found myself thinking about perceptible cultural shifts again at the BABS Convention back in May.

My musings last time were mostly about musical things like approaches to voice-leading and embellishment and performance things like styles of body language in the context of continuous performance traditions. I did mention subject matter in passing, but only mentioned the most ostentatiously outmoded lyrics in defining the category of ‘old’.

Now, by contrast, I found myself observing a clear division in song storyline and lyric between those that evoked social relations that we would wish to promote these days in an organisation that celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion, and those in which the social relations feel uncomfortably old-school.

Anniversary quartet champions Fifth Element on their victory lap

The Spring bank holiday weekend saw the British Association of Barbershop Singers hold their annual Convention in Harrogate, at which they celebrated the organisation’s 50th anniversary. It was a full schedule, with long contests as well as shows and various other activities, and it would have been pretty much impossible to partake of everything on offer as well as catch-up with friends.

To mark the occasion, all quartets who wanted to compete had been invited to do so at the convention itself (rather than going through a preliminary round some months earlier to select the top tranche to compete on the big stage); this meant that Friday was completely filled with the quartet semi-finals. Fortunately, the first ever livestream broadcast of a BABS convention meant that those who were still travelling up during the day were able to keep tabs on what was happening en route. (I hope it was only the car passengers watching while actually on the move, but as everyone turned up alive, I assume this was the case!)

Valerie front and centre in blue: surrounded by some pretty awesome people

The first words Valerie Clowes said to me when I met her in person were, ‘I fucking love your blog!’, which I’d take as a compliment from anyone, but was particularly powerful coming from someone who could communicate so clearly and vividly about things that matter. A few days later, she greeted me as I ran into her on the Harmony University campus with the words: ‘Liz! We were just talking about female sexual autonomy...[in response to my ‘do go on’ face]...My Wild Irish Rose.’

Many words have been written over the past few days about Valerie, what she brought to the world, and how much she will be missed, and I’m not sure if I can add anything useful here. But even if I’m repeating what everyone else has already said, I’d like to take the space to honour her.